Time spent by Merle deciding whether to forget the birth of his children: 0 seconds
Time spent by Magnus deciding whether to forget the memory of the man who killed his wife and destroyed his home: a few minutes
Time spent by Taako deciding whether to become slightly less hot: about two years
What’s important to me in all this is Magnus’ complete acceptance of Taako’s struggle.
Taako: [after learning he has to decide whether to become less hot] [5 more seconds of complete silence] I just don’t….I know I need to make a decision here. It’s just, you know-it’s a tough one, right?
Griffin: You say to one-eyed Merle and Magnus who just forgot the killers of his-
Magnus: No-no listen, everybody’s battle’s are their own and I’m not going to sit here and tell Taako who’s struggle is worse or less than mine.
Taako/Justin: Taako’s also not a good person? Like Taako is not a good person–
Magnus/Travis: Yeah, but I feel I know Taako well enough by this point to know how hard this must be for him. I understand if this is too much and I’ll take two [penalty] spins if this is too much.
Genuinely I loved this so much, Magnus is straight up the sweetest, the nicest, the most heroic of the boys, he’s the friend with an instagram of nothing except dogs he saw on the street and comments on all of taako’s selfies like “you look good today!”
i just wanna remind all of you that resting is NOT a waste of time!!! lying in bed/watching movies/sleeping/whatever you do to rest is not a waste of time!!!! resting is just as integral to managing your symptoms as taking your medication!!! you are not “doing nothing” when you’re resting - you’re actively working to manage your symptoms and take care of your health!!! don’t feel guilty for resting - it’s necessary and good!!! xoxo
Stop telling your Black friends about the antiblack shit your friends and family say and do if you never plan on checking them.. and even then.. chill the fuck out. We are not diaries or a void you can unleash your guilt filled anecdotes into.
I had a prompt for Heith where people in Hunk’s past were cruel to him and Keith helped him through the struggle. I’m so sorry, my inbox seems to have eaten the request!! I have no idea where it went. I hope that this is what you were looking for :)
Hunk looked at his hands and didn’t know what to do with
them.
People had always told him that they were big and clumsy,
warning him to be careful, admonishing him to be gentle. He’d always been
bigger than the other kids, that meant he had to make sure he didn’t
accidentally hurt anyone by playing too rough or just existing. They expected
him to be awkward, telling him so often that he’d started to believe it
himself. He lived in that fear, never being good enough and always afraid that
someone was going to be hurt. That it would be all his fault.
He’d tried to do something better with the hands they called
clumsy and too-big. He trained them to take apart the insides of machines,
learning the delicate systems and how they worked. He could fix things that
were broken, finding the missing, cracked pieces inside and make them better.
He could improve it beyond what it had been built for.
Hunk had trained his hands to cook, to find the artwork in
creation and innovation. Food was just like machines, he could bring the pieces
together into something new and create something that was better than it used
to be. He could make people happy with these hands. At least he tried.
Now they put a weapon in them and told him to fight when all
he wanted to do was run away.
“Hey Hunk, I didn’t see you at dinner.”
A voice startled him out of his thoughts and he looked up at
Keith, the Red Paladin leaning in the doorway. Keith never had the same
problems, he threw himself into battle like he was born for it. Shiro too, he
faced down the Galra with grim determination and tore them apart with his bare
hands. Even Lance and Pidge stood their ground, Pidge cutting the foes down
with her bayard close enough to be burned by the Galra-bot sparks and Lance
bragging about his sharpshooting skills.
When he hesitated, they all thought he was afraid.
“I just wasn’t that hungry, it’s okay.” He had never been a
good liar and Keith picked up on it right away. The Red Paladin moved to sit
down beside him and Hunk didn’t protest.
“I know the fight today was a bit more intense than we
realized, but we all got out of it in one piece. We took the Galra down, there’s
nothing to be afraid of.” Keith offered, not really used to reassuring others
but learning how to be a friend.
Hunk looked down at his hands. It wasn’t fear, not in the
way they thought. He was more afraid of himself than anything.
“That’s not…you ever
think that I’m not supposed to be here?”
Keith blinked in surprise. “Of course you’re supposed to be
here.” He said, matter-of-factly. “Who else would pilot the Yellow Lion?”
“I don’t know, anyone? Someone who’s a better fighter?” Hunk
sighed, hunching his shoulders uncomfortably like he could somehow make himself
smaller. “I don’t think I’m made for this.”
“Because you hesitated today?”
“Yeah.”
Keith frowned thoughtfully. “I know that you’re nervous, but
you’ve never backed down when we’ve been in trouble before. You figured out how
to get the scaltrite from the weblum too and saved both of our lives. You’re
just doubting yourself.”
“It’s more than that.” Anger edged Hunk’s words and he
folded his hands together, safe and quiet in his lap where they couldn’t do any
more harm. “All you guys are so good at all of this and I’m not. You know I’m not. I don’t like
fighting, I don’t know if I want to do this.”
“But you want to help people?”
The question hung in the air and Hunk knew it would be his
undoing. He always wanted to help, he wanted to make everyone happy. He’d spent
his whole life learning how to make things instead of destroying them, was
fighting really the only way now? He couldn’t just be someone who smashed
things apart, using all that strength and anger he buried inside so it wouldn’t
hurt anyone. That’s not who he was, he’d tried so hard to define himself as
something else.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody.” He admitted softly. “All I
want to do is make things.”
Keith reached out and gently unknotted Hunk’s hands, coaxing
them apart before lacing his fingers with Hunk’s own. “And that’s exactly why
we need you.”
I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.
I saw this post about an hour after I saw a post that said, essentially, “There should be a word for that thing where [exactly describes ‘squeeing’].”
I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:
Squee: The noise you make when something is so good that all you can really do is squeak or squeal. A high pitched sound of delight, often accomanied by hugging yourself or others.
Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.
YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments
Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.
AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.
Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins
BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.
DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.
Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition.
Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements
Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements
Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets.
WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”
Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.
Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.
Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words.
Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”
Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.
Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.
Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.
Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.
Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.
Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.
Bashing: When a writer purposefully writes a specific character as a horrible, horrible person so that they can throw them out of the storyline, usually to allow their OTP to get together without trouble. Distinct from fridging in that it doesn’t require the character to die, but rather to be such a screaming harpy that they get rightfully removed from the main characters’ lives for being an abusive hell beast. Generally, a type of character hate. Be wary of people who bash women, queer people, and POC with consistency: they are not safe to be around.
‘Squick’ also has an alternate horrible meaning for Harry Potter fans who were in fandom a while back. Dear god.
Also:
Purple prose: Fic that is excessively flowery and complicated. Basically the “me, an intellectual” meme. If it has the phrase “cerulean orbs” you know it’s purple prose.
Beige prose: The opposite of purple prose. Basically, the plainest (and, if done wrongly, the most boring) type of prose.
R&R: Read & review. Back from when fic comments were called “reviews” and there was no such fucking thing as the kudos button.
This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while now, but I think I know why the whole ‘anti’ thing on here never really had a snowball’s chance in hell of ensnaring me, at least not as an adult. Because my approach to fandom and fannish activities is fundamentally different than that of a substantial number of younger people on Tumblr. To them, fandom’s both primary and overriding function is that of an activism space. Whereas either twenty years ago or now, my approach has always been:
Fandom is for pleasure.
I’m not saying that it can’t or shouldn’t also be a space for activism – it often is for me as well. What I’m saying is that my primary motivation when approaching fannish activity isn’t activism in and of itself. It’s being pleased. The two aren’t diametrically opposed. To wit:
I ship queer ships because that’s what pleases me, that’s what makes me happy;
I scowl at love triangles and write polyamory instead because I had shoddily-written, eye-rolling-inducing, heteronormative love-triangles shoved down my throat for years and now can’t stand them, whereas poly ships make me grin from ear to ear;
I read and write about politically powerful, complex, conflicted, morally gray women because I love them and went through a dearth of them in far too many mediums
So on and so forth. You might be wondering why I’m even pointing this out and going ‘both roads lead to the same thing for you, same difference.’ Not exactly – and Tumblr itself is amply showing the difference. By not basing my approach solely on a form of activism, I’m effectively not limiting myself in the kinds of things I read or write or enjoy. Not all my queer ships need be all fluff and sunshine and rainbows and healthiness. Not all my women protagonists need be shining beacons of morality (most aren’t). I’m a lifelong educator when it comes to consent culture, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to renounce my ravishment fantasies, either in my head, my reading or when practiced in the consensual, communication-first environment of a kinky relationship.
The difference came into sharp focus for me a few months ago, when a post written against the Prince Lotor/Lance pairing of Voltron went something along the lines of ‘shipping this abusive ship is bad because it’s horrible representation for MLM!’ The bedrock assumption underlying the whole thing was that all fannish activity had a moral duty to exist for the express purpose of validation and good representation. Therefore Lotor/Lance wasn’t seen as something in bad taste, to give an example, but rather as a moral failing. This clashes head-on with my own approach, because I’ll ship healthy, meant-to-aspire to dynamics when they please me – but I also go for messy, broken, terrible ones when they also please me.
For me, the overriding question in fandom isn’t ‘what is the most Perfectly Progressive Thing here so I can focus on that.’ It’s ‘what’s the Thing That Pleases Me Most in here.’ That the progressive things largely end up overlapping with what makes me happy is due to my experiences with marginalization and all its associated shit. This, however, doesn’t change the fact that the non-overlap section also includes other things that do it for me (that cater to my kinks, to my darker preferences when it comes to fiction, etc).
The disconnect, I think, comes from the fact that for me (and other older people who’ve also done a lot of hands-on activism work out in meat-space) fandom has always been a place to temporarily break away from how bleak and fuckingexhausting activism can get – to relax and unwind and just lose ourselves for a while, when our IRL projects seem to just be spinning their wheels in the mud. Fandoms that are nothing but activism spaces, where everything must be sanitized and pre-approved and healthy and Pure are a nightmare for me specifically because it would mean I’d have to live my life primarily as an activist 24/7, until I’m completely burnt out.
However, a lot of young people on here haven’t done any on-the-ground activism work – their first meeting with activism was on the Internet and in fandoms and the only place where they could stretch their legs as activists was fandom. Therefore, they take this one step farther and naturally view fandom as primarily a place for activism. I don’t even have to describe how horribly that clashes with what I described above – you can see it at work on Tumblr every day, in the myriad of posts going ‘how dare you ship this?!’ or ‘how dare you get off on that?!?!’ or ‘how dare you support this kink!’
This is why it’s so difficult for a lot of people of my age to find any common-ground with antis. Our starting points are radically different and even when we have more in common than different in regard to fannish preference, we’ll still never see eye to eye, because whole sections of this place have taught themselves that it’s a supposedly horrid thing to approach fandom from any angle that’s not based on a very strict, narrow sort of morality.
people who make sideblogs for every fandom they’re in are WEAK let your followers endure everything you get hyperfixated with to weed out the weaklings
I’m just super fucking bitter that once the flint water crisis got it’s 15 minutes of fame people stopped giving a shit. The water is still poisoned, people! Donations have plummeted and people have been forced back into drinking and bathing with the water! The medical effects of this are astounding, cases of legionnaires disease have skyrocketed, people are having seizures, people are having weird rashes break out over their body, people (including me!) are having their blood poisoned, and it’s not just lead! it’s coliform bacteria! it’s THMs! it’s all in the water and it gets into the bloodstream and breaks down blood vessels, causing bruising and petechiae and internal bleeding and no one gives a shit anymore and it’s only gotten worse like how many people are going to have to die until people realize this is still a problem
I would like to add that the people of Flint cannot sell their houses, because selling a house with leaded water is illegal. Additionally, households with children can’t stop paying for the water because living in a house without running water is cause for CPS to take their kids. Flint has been living this way for over two years.
As some of you might already have guessed, I’m a fan of Japanese girl idols. One of the many, many idol groups in existence today in Japan is NMB48, a Osaka-based spin-off group of the (in)famous AKB48. NMB has a weekly show that’s surprisingly entertaining as well as educational called NMB to Manabu-kun, in which the members of NMB and a few comedians listen to guest lectures by experts in various fields.
Back on May 15th, the theme of the episode was pataphysics/the science of sci-fi. One of the topics of the lecture held by university professor Yanagita Rikao was the age-old question of “WHY ARE MAGICAL GIRLS NEVER ATTACKED WHILE TRANSFORMING???”
This was his answer, based on the magical girl series Futari wa Pretty Cure.
Question: The transformation scenes in
Pretty Cure are very long, so why don’t the bad guys attack the girls in the meantime?
“Even when I was little, I was thinking ‘Hey! Attack them now!’”
“I found this odd as well, so I watched the transformation scene many times. And what I noticed is, when the Pretty Cures yell ‘Dual Aurora Wave!’ and transform, a rainbow-colored column of light shoots up from the ground, going BOOM!”
“And then the Pretty Cures levitate, and go up into the air. Based on this, I believe the protagonists of Pretty Cure are being held up in the air by the power of light.”
“When we think of light, we usually think it heats up things or lights up things. But in reality, light has the power to hold up things as well.”
“When the sun is beating down on us in the summer, the human body is being pressed downwards by the sun beams with a force of 2/100,000g.”
“But this is only about a one-hundred of the weight of a mosquito, so no matter how hot it is, we don’t feel that sunlight is heavy.”
“So that means the light holding them up must be extremely strong. If we assume that the two Pretty Cures each weigh about 45kg and do some calculations…”
“It means the light during the transformation must have the energy of 2,100,000,000kW per 1m2.”
“While the entirety of power that Japan is capable of generating is only 100,000,000kW.”
“So they’re using 21 TIMES the amount of energy the whole of Japan can generate.”
“So what would happen if a bad guy jumped in to try to sabotage their transformation?”
“He would EVAPORATE INSTANTLY.”
“DEATH AWAITS ANYONE WHO DARES TO DISRUPT A PRETTY CURE TRANSFORMATION.”
“So this means the best thing to do would be to transform close to any bad guys.”
“Yes. They are the strongest while they transform, and are practically invincible.”
When you apply science to magical girls, you find out just how strong and horrifying they really would be.
One maladaptive coping mechanism that turns very toxic when you’re
not defending against abuse is to read any uncomfortable situation as a
deliberate personal attack, and sometimes extrapolate one incident into a
whole pattern of malicious intent.
Examples:
“Hey, I have a headache, could you please lower your voice a little?” - “FINE I guess I just won’t say anything at all!”
“Hey thanks for inviting me, but I’m not feeling well, so I’m sorry but I can’t make it. Maybe (x day) instead?” - “Sorry for asking! I guess I’m just too needy for you!”
(Someone forgets to call you back.) - “Yeah I don’t think we’re friends anymore, she acts like she hates me.”
“Hey, what you just said about me was literally not true. Why did you say that?” - “Right, I’m just a piece of shit who should never talk at all I guess!”
“I don’t really feel like sex tonight.” - “Sorry I’m so repulsive to you!”
“You really hurt my feelings. Why did you do that?” - ”Go ahead and just break up with me, I know you’ve been wanting to.”
This kind of response escalates an interaction from a two-way conversation about a specific problem into a fight about your own self-worth. Instead of reponding to what’s actually happening or interrogating whether an attack was intended, this response immediately changes the conversation into a defensive argument where the only relevant question is if you’re an okay person that people care about.
Like I get feeling this
kind of reaction, I get having a knee-jerk response of fear and shame
and self-loathing. Sometimes when you’re feeling vulnerable it is very,
very difficult not to read super far into anything negative. Sometimes
it just reflects off all your internal fears and amplifies inside of you
until a polite “no” feels like everyone you’ve ever liked is telling
you they hate you.
But it is possible, with some work, to
separate your feelings from your actual knowledge of the situation. It’s
possible to feel one thing in your heart and still recognize with your
mind that the reality is different. You can learn to notice the
difference between someone actually attacking you and something just
feeling like an attack because you’re extra vulnerable.
You
can also learn not to react based solely on your feelings. You can learn
to take another person’s actual words and actions into account and
respond based on what you think - not just feel - their intent actually was. That work is
as necessary as it is difficult.
People need to be able to tell
you things that aren’t overwhelmingly positive without you making them
feel guilty for saying anything and treating their concerns as an
attack.
Otherwise, you wind up in a position where they can’t be honest with you. They can’t say no to you, can’t tell you when something you do hurts or scares them, can’t point out worrying things as
friends do to take care of each other, can’t bring up their own needs without the conversation devolving into comforting you again.
This habit interacts especially badly with
the way many other trauma survivors are terrified of upsetting anyone –
when your reaction to them bringing up problems or saying no is consistently disproportionate, they may
find it easier to just do what you want even against their own will.
It is possible to deal with those awful feelings and get the comfort you need without resorting to lashing out when you feel bad. It’s okay to be honest about the fact your emotions don’t always line up with reality so people know what you’re going through. It’s okay to just ask for the emotional support you need or for confirmation that they mean what they say.
You may even find that when you make a continuous effort not to treat these uncomfortable experiences as crises, they deescalate and you wind up feeling more secure each time.
Look, this coping mechanism, like many forms of manipulation, is a useful survival tool in the context of an abusive relationship where you really are being attacked insidiously, and where you can’t just ask for comfort and expect to get it. But if you are no longer in that kind of situation, it’s time to reevaluate the usefulness/danger ratio and figure out what other strategies might be better for you and the people you love.
*valid does not mean healthy, or good, or to be privileged above common sense and kindness
A distinction for anyone who is young and hasn’t figured this out yet:
You are allowed to have whatever emotions you want. No one can control your emotions. Emotions are healthy responses to things.
You are not allowed to have behaviors that are harmful just because you have certain emotions. Your behaviors are what you can control, and they are far easier to control than your emotions.
You can be jealous about someone or their talents until you turn green, but it is harmful to yourself and to that person if you try to sabotage them because of it. You can be so angry you can literally feel your temperature rise, but this does not give you permission to rage at others.
Your emotions are valid. They are always valid. You are a person of value. However, you behaviors are not always justified just because of those emotions. You may not be able to control you emotions, but you can certainly control your behaviors.
and this one, i beg you to learn before you become right-wing fundamentalists: just because something gives you revulsion feelings does not mean it’s morally wrong.
you may be sex-repulsed; that doesn’t mean sex is dirty and bad. maybe you were bullied by teenage girls; that doesn’t mean teenage girls are a force of evil. perhaps a villain in a work of fiction reminds you of someone who abused you; that doesn’t mean people who enjoy that character or that fiction are abusive. your feelings about those things are absolutely valid, and it’s not right for people to tell you you shouldn’t feel that way. but it’s also not right for you to act out against others based on those feelings.
that instinct to generalize served our species well when we were hunter-gatherers living in small bands in a hostile wilderness. you nibble a delicious-looking berry, you throw up, you know that berry is BAD and you make the yuck face whenever you see it so the other hominids know it’s a bad one. but in the modern world, in the information age, there are so many complex things you might encounter, you’re going to have badfeels about a lot of things that aren’t actually across-the-board bad.
you need to not be ruled by your hominid yuckberry instinct. that’s where bigotry comes from.
I think a lot about who I am to other people in the world–particular who I am to strangers as a mere concept in their lives.
Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”
And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.
Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.
“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”
They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”
And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.
And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.
I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.
Varkon is one of my favorite characters probably, because like. first we meet the galra empire who are the main villains of this entire thing, and then we meet the Blade who are Cool And Serious Rebels and then Space Mall comes along and we meet the first civilian galra and it’s a goddamn mall cop who is the squeakiest sparkly-clean immaculate lawful good you have ever met.
The rules that govern him are so menial and tedious (can’t leave the mall on a chase since it’s not his jurisdiction) and his resources are incredibly humble (is he the only cop at this dang mall? his scooter goes like 5mph tops) but he is committed danget. This man will fight pirates for this mall. Is he even armed? What was he gonna do if he caught the paladins, fisticuffs? Has Varkon actually punched out a space pirate before? I want to believe. In my heart, I know he has it in him.
It’s him. here he is. maybe not the single best character in Voltron, but. top ten, easily.
